TEHRAN- Iranian Steel industry has been constantly developing over the past years against all the pressures and obstacles created by the outside forces like the U.S. sanctions and the coronavirus outbreak that has severely affected the performance of the world’s top producers.

Production of crude steel in Iran increased 14.4 percent in July from the figure for the same month in the past year, while the average global production for this commodity has fallen 2.5 percent in the mentioned month, a report recently released by the World Steel Association (WSA) said.

According to the WSA, Iranian steel producers produced 2.339 million tons of crude steel during July, rising from 2.045 million tons produced in the same time span of 2019, Shata reported.

The Iranian steel industry has outshined the world producers in this sector during the first seven months of 2020 altogether, as based on the WSA report Iran produced 16.335 million tons of the mentioned commodity during January-July period of 2020, 10.8 percent more than the figure in the same seven months of 2019.

The world’s 64 top steel producers managed to produce 1.27 billion tons of crude steel in the said period, 5.3 percent less than the output for the last year’s same seven months.

Iran’s crude steel production had also increased by 30 percent in 2019 while the average global growth in this sector stood at 3.5 percent.

The country managed to produce 31.9 million tons of crude steel during 2019, while the figure was 24 million tons in 2018.

According to the World Steel Association, Iran became the world’s tenth-largest steel producer in 2018.

Iran which stood at the 13th place in 2017 could lag behind three major steel producers in the world, namely Italy, Taiwan, and Ukraine to stand at the 10th place in 2018, despite the re-imposition of sanctions by the U.S.

Last month, a board member of the Iranian Steel Producers Association (ISPA) told IRNA that Iran has the capacity to export 15 million tons of steel per annum.

Saying that the country’s annual steel production has reached 30 million tons, Reza Shahrestani stated that of this figure 15 million tons can be exported and bring $7 billion of revenue for the country.

“Iran is now among the world’s top ten steel producers and in order to prove our capabilities in this due, we should have a strong presence in the international markets”, he stressed.

As previously reported, Iran’s export of steel products in the past Iranian calendar year (ended on March 19) rose 27 percent compared to its preceding year.

The country’s major steel producers managed to export about 7.33 million tons of the products in the previous year.

According to the data released by the Industry, Mining, and Trade Ministry, in the mentioned period over 20.226 million tons of steel ingots were produced by the country’s 10 major companies to register a five-percent rise year on year.

The country has also defined 16 development projects in the steel sector to boost the output of steel products by 17.3 million tons in five years.

These projects are for constructing production units each with the capacity of 600,000 tons, while some other projects have been also defined to set up some units with under 500,000-ton capacity that together with the 600,000-ton capacity units will add 19.1 million tons to the country’s annual steel products output.

In its outlook plan for the Iranian calendar year 1404 (2025-2026) Iran has envisaged production of 55 million tons of steel per annum, and to achieve this target the country requires to produce 160 million tons of iron ore concentrates.

Industry, Mining, and Trade Ministry has announced that production of iron ore concentrate in Iran also reached 47.306 million tons in the previous Iranian calendar year, registering a four-percent rise compared to the preceding year.

The country has extracted 64.274 million tons of iron ore during the past year, according to the data released by Iranian Mines and Mining Industries Development and Renovation Organization.

EF/MA